1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to fixing control of an image formed by an electrophotographic method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Because of recent rising awareness of ecological problems, power consumption is required to be reduced, and there is a need of more energy-saving fixing temperature control capable of adjustment to a temperature that can reliably fix an image for each page when the amount of applied toner changes depending on the image of a page to be output. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2013-76890 discloses a technique of creating a temperature-regulate profile in advance from the print setting of a print job of a plurality of pages and printing at an appropriate fixing temperature based on the profile at the time of printing.
In a general image forming apparatus, an interrupt function capable of printing by interrupting printing under execution is implemented. This allows the user to execute urgent copying or printing with priority over the job currently printing.
However, when the interrupt printing function is used, it may be impossible to do fixing on a target print page at an appropriate fixing temperature. That is, a timing shift may occur between the fixing temperature to be controlled based on the temperature-regulate profile for print data created in advance and the page that actually passes through an image forming unit including a fixing unit.